Quote:
Originally Posted by childofchaos831
I have been lucky enough to have never been discriminated against severely for anything. I am a Caucasian female, grew up middle class (although my mother worked 1 full time job and 2 part time at one point), did well academically, and never got into legal trouble (tho I could say never got caught). But then I also have severe mental illness, have received disability benefits for 13 years, have not been able to keep a job because of the disability/mental illness,
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Sorry hit the wrong button...
I still live with my mother, even tho she is abusive and responsible for the majority of my mental illness, I resorted to substances and unhealthy behaviors to cope, I identify as LGBT, the list could keep going.
I cringe when I hear the word crazy used to describe anything that is abnormal or extreme. "Did you see that car chase on the news? That was crazy!" "What do you think of that outfit so and so is wearing? It's all over the place, so crazy!" To so called normal people, the res nothing wrong with using that word in those sentences. To me, it's just a derogatory term that the definition has morphed over time, in the same sense as gay, queer, retarded, twig, sketchy, even b***h to an extent.
Some words that used to be insults have been taken back by the people they were used against, such as queer or dyke. But then for some, those words still have the power to sting. Maybe over time, we can take back the word crazy and make it ours, but it took decades for queer to become acceptable to some people, and there's still room for growth there. For communities to take these insults and make them their words, they had to speak up and express the hurts that were caused by people using them, which means we (the mentally ill community as a whole, not just PC) will need to be the ones to start the wheels of change. It takes starting conversation amongst ourselves first to get there, so thank you OP for your rant.